## Dataset

This Harvard Dataverse entry includes the following dataset (use the UTF-8 encoding when reading this into R or Python):

cites.cops.csv: Individual attendee records for the Conference of the Parties (CoPs) meetings of The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) for CoPs 1-20. This COP-Attendee level dataset includes variables for: CoP, COPyear, COPcity, Status, Delegation, URL, Honorific, PersonID, Affiliation, AffiliationStatus, COPlatitude, COPlongitude, Latitude, Longitude, Distance, Female, Male, Party, Observer, DelegationCOW, and DelegationISO.



## Variables

For the aforementioned variables, more detailed descriptions of all variables are as follows:

CoP: A categorical string variable indicating the specific CITES CoP that a given attendee participated in, such as "CoP 1" or "CoP 13."

CoPyear: A numeric variable indicating the year associated with the CITES COP that an attendee participated in, such as 1976 or 2004. 

CoPcity: A categorical string variable indicating the host city associated with the CITES COP that an attendee participated in, such as "Bern (Switzerland)" or  "Bangkok (Thailand)."

Status: A categorical string variable indicating an attendee's delegation type. Note that for all COPs except COP 18-20, this variable denotes status as either "Parties" or "Observers." For COPs 18-20, the "Observers" are instead denoted in more fine grained categories such as "Private Sector,"  "Intergovernmental Organizations," "Nomenclature specialist," "Non-Governmental Organizations," or "United Nations and its Specialized Agencies."

Delegation: A free text variable including the name of the specific delegation that an individual was attending on behalf of.

URL: A free text variable including the link to an attendee's associated PDF attendance roster, when available. 

Honorific: A categorical string variable reflecting standardized versions of the honorifics that attendees provided, for COPs that collected this information. 

PersonID: A stable anonymized  identifier created by applying a salted cryptographic hash to each attendee's standardized full name. 

Affiliation: A free text variable detailing an individual's specific affiliation(s), after omitting some affiliation details such as telephone numbers and email addressees for privacy purposes.

AffiliationStatus: A categorical variable indicating whether (and where applicable, to what level of precision) an attendee's affiliation was modified in our final data to preserve anonymity. Options include: “KeptOriginal”, “City”, “State”, or “Country”. 

COPlatitude: A numeric variable recording the decimal degrees (DD) latitude coordinates of the COP host city for the COP that a participant attended.

COPlongitude: A numeric variable recording the decimal degrees (DD) latitude coordinates of the COP host city for the COP that a participant attended.

Latitude: A numeric variable recording the decimal degrees (DD) latitude coordinates of a participant's affiliation location, when available. To avoid overly precise geolocations, we reverse geocode each coordinate  pair and retain only city/state/country level coordinates.

Longitude: A numeric variable recording the decimal degrees (DD) longitude coordinates of a participant's affiliation location, when available. To avoid overly precise geolocations, we reverse geocode each coordinate  pair and retain only city/state/country level coordinates.

Distance: A numeric variable reflecting the Haversine distance, in kilometers, between an attendee's affiliation location and the host city of the COP that they attended. 

GeoPrecision: The level of geocoding precision, encompassing City, State-Province, or Country.

Female: A binary variable indicating whether (=1) or not (=0) an individual attendee was inferred to be female based upon the approach described further above.

Male: A binary variable indicating whether (=1) or not (=0) an individual attendee was inferred to be male based upon the approach described further above.

Party: A binary variable indicating whether (=1) or not (=0) an attendee's delegation was a formal CITES Party.

Observer: A binary variable indicating whether (=1) or not (=0) an attendee's delegation was a CITES Observer group.

DelegationCOW: A numeric Correlates of War (COW) country code identifier for country delegations.

DelegationISO: A three-letter ISO 3166-1 country code identifier for country delegations.



#Additional resources

Further details on these datasets, variables, and the methods used to produce these data can be found in: Blinova, D., G. Emuru, R. Emuru, and B.E. Bagozzi. 2026. "Geo-located attendance data for CITES Conferences of the Parties." 

Further details on the code and intermediate inputs needed for producing these data can be found at: https://github.com/bagozzib/CITES_Data

For questions, please contact Benjamin E. Bagozzi at bagozzib@udel.edu

